


Ada (Short For Andraste)

by AuditoryCheesecake



Series: A Cheesecake's Tumblr Shorts [14]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adoribull - Freeform, Dorian Makes A Friend, Kid!Fic, M/M, as in there is a kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:04:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7542607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuditoryCheesecake/pseuds/AuditoryCheesecake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian certainly understands why children like the Iron Bull more than they like him. That doesn't mean he's not a little jealous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ada (Short For Andraste)

Inquisitor Cadash was many things. She was a deadly fighter, competent leader and reluctant religious figure. She was cheerful, vulgar, and honest, and she loved nothing more than gallivanting about the hinterlands, killing wolves and hunting for the refugees and rescuing kittens from trees.

Currently, she was talking seriously with a farmer about the effect of the breach on weather patterns, and what that would mean for the good woman’s wheat harvest. That in turn, would effect how much she could expect to pay to grind her flour at her neighbor’s mill. Dorian had no idea what she expected Cadash to do to help, but here they were regardless. When Cadash mentioned druffalo, Dorian wandered off to find somewhere to sit.

There was a bench on the side of the farmer’s cottage, facing a small herb garden, and Dorian soaked up the weak Fereldan sunlight gratefully. The days were still scandalously short, but with spring firmly arrived they were slowly beginning to lengthen. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, listening to the soft sounds of the bees hard at work among the flowers and Cadash’s voice floating through the window.

A shadow fell across him, and he cracked one eye open to see the Iron Bull. “You’re in my sun,” Dorian said. “If you don’t move I’ll probably freeze solid and never be warm again.” A breeze swept across the back of his neck as he was speaking, and he shivered.

Bull chuckled and lowered himself to the ground beside the bench, leaning his elbow on Dorian’s thigh. "It’s getting warmer.”

“Not fast enough. I don’t know how these flowers are blooming, there was frost on my tent this morning!” He felt Bull’s hand skim his knee. His arm was heavy and warm against Dorian’s leg. "Ice in my stew!”

“Poor little houthouse flower,” Bull’s voice was fond. “You just need someone to keep you warm at night.”

“I do _not_ –” Dorian swallowed his witty and biting rejoinder, because he didn’t want to sully the ears of the child that was peeking around one of the garden hedges.

She was small and skinny, with a cloud of black hair and skin a shade darker than Dorian’s own. She regarded the two of them with solemn brown eyes, wide and bright.

“Hey there,” Bull held his hand out palm up, a welcoming gesture. He always seemed to attract children wherever they went, and had a posse of hangers-on in Skyhold, bloodthirsty little beasts who loved to try to lift his ax and listen to his battle stories. Dorian thought he carried candies in his pockets just in case he met a child who didn’t immediately love him.

The girl approached them slowly, but she looked at Dorian, rather than Bull. He looked back, uncertain what to do with the attention.

“If you’re really cold,” her Fereldan accent was strident and acutely adorable, “you can have my blanket. It’s probably too small for you, but Mama’s teaching me and Caleb how to make quilts this summer so we won’t need the old ones any more.”

Dorian blinked, and Bull struggled to cover his laughter with a protracted coughing fit.

“You could sew it to your coat,” she offered. “To fix that big hole on your shoulder.” Bull coughed harder.

“That’s extremely kind of you,” Dorian stammered. “But I couldn’t possibly–”

“Mother Elane says Andraste and the Maker want us to take care of each other. We have to share and keep each other safe, especially with the sky and the fighting,” she told him seriously. “And we should always help people who have less than us. I have a blanket, and you’re cold, so I should help you.”

“You are a very generous young lady,” Dorian said, “and I hope your mother’s very proud of you, but I don’t want to take things from you that you might need later.”

She frowned and opened her mouth to object.

“And I’m not really very cold,” he assured her. “I can use magic to keep myself warm.”

He wondered if that was the wrong thing to say. He didn’t want to scare her. She didn’t seem to mind, though, and just nodded thoughtfully. She turned to Bull. “Do you want my blanket? You don’t even have a shirt.”

“Nah, I’m alright, kid.” He smiled at her, something softer than Dorian was used to seeing on his face. “My name’s Bull. What’s yours?”

“Ada. After Lady Andraste. And my gran.”

“You’re a credit to both of them,” Dorian interjected. He wasn’t about to let Bull purloin the only Fereldan who actually preferred him. “I’m Dorian.” It was an awkward maneuver, but her giggle when he kissed the back of her hand was worth bending over Bull’s arm.

“Are you an Arl?” she asked. “That’s how the Arl said hello to the Queen. We went to Redcliffe when she came. She was beautiful and she had a really big horse.”

“No, we don’t have Arls where I’m from.”

“Do you have horses?”

“Yes.” Dorian couldn’t help but smile when her face lit up.

“Master Dennet down in the valley says I’m good with horses. He even asked Mama if she’d let me ‘prentice with him when I’m bigger.” Her smile faltered. “We haven’t gone to see him in weeks. I hope he didn’t get hurt in the fighting.”

“Master Dennet’s come to work with the Inquisition, just like us,” Bull said quickly. “He’s not hurt at all.”

“Can you tell him that me and Mama and Caleb are all alright? And I haven’t forgotten the things he was teaching me about horses. I had to stop my lessons with Mother Elane or I’d write a letter,” she said, a little apologetically.

“I have paper in my pack,” Dorian pulled out his notebook and the travel ink set Varric had lent him. “You tell me what to write and I’ll bring it with me.”

Ada’s eyes shone and she scrambled onto the bench next to him. She nearly buzzed with excitement, and Bull caught the little inkpot when she jostled it out of Dorian’s hand.

“I’ll hold onto this,” he said over her apologies, and unscrewed it carefully before propping himself back up on Dorian’s leg. Dorian ignored the soft little smile on his face. What did the Iron Bull have to smirk about?

The letter itself was brief, but Ada kept veering into tangents about horses, and the fennec she’d seen in the garden that morning, and how she was better at fishing than her brother Caleb was, but he was better in the garden. 

It was quite possibly the longest Dorian had talked to someone not in Cadash’s inner circle in months. He felt just as disappointed as Ada looked when her mother finally concluded her business with Cadash and the Inquisitor’s party had to move on.

Dorian folded the letter carefully and tucked it between the pages of his notebook. The farmer eyed him skeptically, and Dorian suppressed a sigh. That was far more familiar treatment. “Your daughter will be a remarkable horsewoman someday,” he told her. “You should be very proud of her.”

Ada looked up at him with a blinding smile, and to the surprise of nearly everyone, threw her arms around his waist. Dorian absolutely did not tear up slightly when he knelt to return the embrace.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me,” Dorian said to Bull as they rode away. Ada was still standing at the gate, and he waved a final time before settling frontward in his saddle. “I know that look on your face.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Bull said, his tone serious despite his smile. “It’s good to see you come out of your shell a little bit.”

“I do not have a _shell_ ,” Dorian sputtered. “Do I have a shell?” he asked Cadash, who shrugged.

“You can seem a bit aloof,” was her diplomatic reply.

“Just takes the right sort of person to see through it,” Bull said, and Dorian caught the tail end of his sidelong glance. “Like Ada. Keep an eye out for that kid, Boss. If the Inquisition’s still around in seven years, she’d be the type you want.”

“I do not want to be running this circus in seven years,” Cadash muttered. “Let’s move. We’ve got a war to end, a sky to fix, and a missing druffalo to find.”


End file.
